Getting Political Is Running for Office the Next Step for Researchers in the Fight Against Climate Inaction?

CLIMATE CHANGE OUTLOOK CHAD HIPOLITO Climate modeller and Canadian politician Andrew Weaver. POLICY Getting political Is running for office the next step for researchers in the fight against climate inaction? BY PETER FAIRLEY championed fossil fuels and neglected climate everywhere: in classrooms and churches, facto- policy. He negotiated climate-friendly terms ries and farms. We’re on sidewalks, in cafes, on t’s moving day at the Legislative Assembly with the NDP to install John Horgan as the the airwaves and in your Twitter feeds,” declared of British Columbia on a sunny summer party’s first premier in 16 years. Jacquelyn Gill, a palaeoecologist at the Univer- morning in Victoria, Canada, and climate Weaver is an internationally recognized sity of Maine in Orono, in The Washington Post Iscientist-turned politician Andrew Weaver pioneer of models that represent Earth’s physi- on the eve of the marches, which she helped to is battling to retain an expansive leather sofa cal systems at a modest resolution, facilitating organize. “The age of ivory tower science is over, for his new basement office. Just a few weeks the simulation of climate over tens of thou- and it must not return.” earlier, in May 2017, thousands of people in sands of years. His ascent from academic to Benjamin Santer echoed Gill’s view at a and around Victoria cast their votes for the political power broker is a far cry from the Capitol Hill gathering two months later. “If British Columbia Green Party, which Weaver attacks on climate scientists that are under you’re a climate scientist at this critical time leads, growing the caucus from his one lonely way in the United States. But there are US you don’t have Miranda rights,” said Santer, an seat to three. The wider of the office’s sofas, he researchers who dare to dream that they too atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Liver- explains, will be crucial during long nights of can tilt the political balance. In fact, dozens more National Laboratory in California. “You debate and voting. “This is the one you can have declared the intent to run for local, state don’t have the right to remain silent.” sleep on. And we need that.” or national office, promising to reverse the dis- Some researchers, however, worry that Three seats in an 87-seat legislature might missal of climate change and other anti-science electioneering risks crossing a hitherto sacred sound modest, but it’s enough to make positions espoused by US President Donald boundary between science and partisanship. Weaver — a professor at the University of Trump’s administration and other Republican Similar to a controlled burn that escapes its Victoria — into a political kingmaker. The Party leaders. limits, getting political could burn the climate incumbent Liberal Party and the opposition Their activism hews to a trend: in recent community if it deepens the divides that sur- New Democratic Party (NDP) each garnered years, climate scientists have grown increasingly round climate science. fewer than half of the seats, giving Weaver’s outspoken. Their call for immediate action to Green Party the balance of power. Weaver avoid the worst effects of anthropogenic climate HOLDING THE BALANCE exercised his new-found influence in the weeks change was a key theme of the March for Sci- Weaver was already well-versed in climate after the election to remove Christy Clark, the ence rallies held on Earth Day in April 2017 in politics when he decided to run for office in Liberal premier of British Columbia, who had more than 500 cities worldwide. “Scientists are British Columbia five years ago. A lead author ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All r12i gh tOCTOBERs reserved. 2017 | VOL 550 | NATURE | S59 OUTLOOK CLIMATE CHANGE on the second to the fifth assessment reports argument proffered by academics. “They’re according to Calgary Herald columnist Don of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate disturbed by what’s happening on the climate Braid in a June 2017 piece, made Weaver into Change — an organization that shared the front and are really annoyed that politicians “almost a stock villain” in Alberta. “It’s damned 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore — he are no longer listening to people who actually annoying,” he writes. “One [legislator], com- RICCARDO SAVI was part of the advisory team that, in 2008, know what they’re talking about,” says Lawson. manding only three votes in total, could stall helped Liberal premier Gordon Campbell to the pipeline for more months or years, and craft a climate action plan. The policy pack- GREENING THE AGENDA maybe right out of existence.” age stymied the building of coal-fired power Over the next four years, Weaver pushed back Weaver has also been demonized in British plants by requiring their emissions to be fully against Clark’s vision for fossil-fuel-driven Columbia for allegedly splitting the progres- captured and sequestered. It also introduced economic growth. Although Clark paid little sive vote and therefore undermining the NDP. North America’s first carbon tax, which would heed, Weaver’s stance put pressure on the All this for a job that, Weaver says, entailed a rise to Can$30 (US$25) per tonne of carbon opposition NDP to step up. “Weaver forced huge cut in salary and cost him both his chair dioxide equivalent over the next four years as the NDP to return to the environmental side at the University of Victoria and his place at the Europe’s market-based carbon price slid to less of their traditional coalition,” says Lawson. The forefront of climate modelling. than half that value. party reversed its earlier stance against carbon But for Weaver, it is more than worth it. Not Then Weaver watched as leadership on taxes, for example, and opposed a controversial just because he is fighting for his own values, climate both at home and abroad faltered. In pipeline from oil sands in the neighbouring but because of the human side of legislat- British Columbia, the NDP campaigned to province of Alberta that is projected to boost ing that all elected representatives encoun- axe the carbon tax in 2009. Shortly after came tanker traffic in Vancouver and Victoria ter — whether or not they have worn a lab what Weaver calls the “terribly depressing” sevenfold, increasing the risk of oil spills. coat. Weaver says that helping constituents Copenhagen agreement, in which the inter- Now, however, Weaver is policing has turned what began as a moral imperative national community failed to commit to rein- government policy from a position of power. into something immensely satisfying. “I didn’t ing in greenhouse-gas emissions. And then, The agreement he forged after the May 2017 realize how rewarding it would be when you’re in 2011, the Liberal Party replaced its then election to put the NDP in power set British there helping constituents access the system,” leader Campbell with Clark, who favoured Columbia back on course towards climate he explains. the development of fossil-fuel industry. Clark action. As Gregor Robertson, mayor of Van- froze the carbon tax and staked British Colum- couver, puts it: “The dynamic duo of John CLIMATE CANDIDATES bia’s future on building a liquefied natural gas Horgan and Andrew Weaver has changed the In the United States, an increasing number industry that would obliterate the province’s game for British Columbia. We have an oppor- of researchers say that they are ready to join emissions-reduction targets for 2020. tunity to become climate leaders and economic the political fight, their resolve galvanized by Enough was enough. In 2012, Weaver leaders in a low-carbon future.” Weaver’s back- President Trump’s ambition to eviscerate US concluded his university course on climate and ground, he says, “adds major credibility.” climate policy and slash federal funding for society, as he had done for years, by lecturing The carbon tax will start to rise again in 2018, science — an agenda that has emboldened his students on intergenerational equity and at $5 per tonne per year until 2021. That is half long-standing opponents of climate action in their “duty and responsibility” to either vote of the boost advocated by the Green Party in Congress. A growing number of scientists say or “consider running” for office themselves. the run-up to May’s election. But the tax’s scope that the situation calls for more than speak- But this time he went a step further. “I took will expand to cover two sources that account ing out from the sidelines, and several dozen a look in the mirror,” says Weaver. “I couldn’t for more than one-third of British Columbia’s have already announced preparations to chal- just write another paper on climate science carbon emissions: carbon dioxide released lenge the climate-change deniers on their talking about this problem that we have all the during the burning of forestry leftovers and home turf — in state capitols and in the halls solutions for. I have kids. I had to step up.” methane leaked by the oil and gas industry. of power in Washington DC. Weaver took temporary On expanding the infrastructure for fossil Among those running for Congress is leave from his endowed “The age of fuels, the deal commits the NDP government Joseph Kopser, a combat veteran and tech- professorship, joined a ivory tower to “immediately employ every tool available” to nology entrepreneur who holds a bachelor’s Green Party that was yet science is block the controversial Alberta pipeline expan- degree in aerospace engineering, and a mas- to have a member elected over, and sion.

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